AMD Tigris Notebook Platform is Good at Video

If you like to transcode video from your laptop, Tigris will do it rather well.

Along with the launch of the new Vision branding initiative and the ultrathin mobile platform Congo, AMD today also debuted its new mainstream notebook platform codename Tigris.

Of course, the mainstream segment covers all AMD-powered notebooks outside of the ultrathin products – from the low-cost entry level all the way up to the full desktop replacement models.

AMD's new processors for the Tigris platform start at the bottom with the Sempron M100, which runs with a single core at 2.0 GHz, 512 KB of L2 and a 25W TDP and end at the top with a Turion II II Ultra dual-core M640 2.6 GHz with 2 MB of L2 and a 35W TDP.

AMD's entire line of new processors feature AMD-V, giving them the virtualization technology necessary to run XP Mode with Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate. Check out the full list of the new processors here.

Of all the new characteristics that Tigris brings to the table, AMD VP of Advanced Marketing Pat Moorhead seems most impressed with the new muscle brought by the integrated ATI Radeon HD 4200 GPU.

Referring to an MSI Tigris-based notebook, Moorhead noted in his blog, "The most amazing and new feature of this Tigris-based notebook for me was the GPU-assisted video encoding. … Of the 15 videos I tested, when I was using the GPU, I got nearly twice the performance … This is accomplished through the graphics card’s ATI Stream Technology and using the ATI Stream-enabled Cyberlink Espresso software application."

On the gaming front, the integrated Radeon HD 4200 manages to get most modern 3D games running decently (it scores 1,800 base in 3DMark 06), but AMD still says that it would recommend that gamers opt for a full discrete card.